Deadlands

by Lily Herne

  Saint crept forward and checked them out. ‘’S’cool,’ she said, relaxing. ‘They’re way past their sell-by date.’

  This was getting weirder by the second. ‘So they can’t sense you either?’ I asked.

  ‘Course not. We wouldn’t last five minutes, otherwise.’

  ‘But why can’t they?’

  ‘Don’t you ever stop asking questions?’ she said.

  ‘I need to know!’

  She sighed. ‘Look, we don’t know for sure. Some of us just have that . . . ability.’

  That was when the full horror of it struck me. ‘Oh, no!’ I said. ‘The others – the others in the wagon! We have to help them!’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do about that now,’ the guy – Ash – said. ‘Get over it.’

  I glared at him, then turned back to Saint. ‘What will happen to them?’

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Saint said. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  Without checking to see if I was going to follow them, they started walking off along the grassed-over highway, heading in the direction of the mountain. I hesitated for a second and then jogged after them. My mind was racing, question after question forming on my lips, and I wasn’t going to let the only people who could answer them get too far away.

  As we skirted around the remains of a bus that was lying on its side, I paused and looked back towards the mall. It rose above the jungle of overgrown weeds like a ginormous white ship.

  I turned back to Ash and Saint, but they’d gone. Where they’d been a moment earlier, there was only fynbos and high grass. ‘Hey!’ I shouted.

  Racing around a sprawling myrtle thicket, I caught sight of them. They were deep in conversation and I increased my pace so that I could eavesdrop.

  ‘You get them?’ Saint asked Ash.

  ‘Yeah. Weighs a ton, though.’ He shrugged his shoulder under the backpack.

  ‘Tough! You should have done the underwear run. Nice and light!’

  ‘Lucky you. Want to swap?’

  ‘As if! You should have left the books to Ginger. He loves that sparkly vampire crap. It’s your tough luck that Hester needed him back early.’

  ‘Yeah. But he did it last time. Besides, it gives me a chance to beef up my muscles.’

  Saint snorted. ‘Like you need it.’

  It didn’t take me long to figure out what they were talking about. Their rucksacks were obviously stuffed full of goods from the mall.

  ‘You’re Mall Rats!’ I said, remembering Lungi’s stash back at the shack in New Arrivals. I’d never considered when Thabo had told me about them that there would be a real mall involved.

  ‘Give the girl a prize,’ Saint said, without turning around.

  ‘How far is the mall from the enclave?’ I asked.

  ‘Not too far. Maybe ten kilometres.’

  ‘How are we going to get back in?’

  ‘Relax, Zombie Bait,’ Saint said. ‘It’s under control.’

  Ash said something under his breath to her and she laughed. The irritation I was feeling was beginning to turn into something like hate for him. I hung back as they walked on, chatting. They were obviously close, and they joshed each other like Jobe and I used to do in the old days. At one stage Saint nudged his shoulder hard enough to make him stumble, and he retaliated by pretending to try and trip her up.

  It hadn’t taken nature long to take over Cape Town. Ten years. Impossible to imagine that what we were walking down was once a six-lane highway. In places the Port Jacksons, pines and keurboom trees were so high that I couldn’t see anything but bush and sky in front of me, and sometimes duikers and other small buck darted and skipped around us, more curious than afraid. Every so often we’d come across a group of feral cats, but they also fled as we stomped through their territory. Ash and Saint took a right into the bushes, weaving around the trees and junked cars effortlessly as if they knew exactly where they were going, and I realised that they were following a path. It wasn’t easy to see at first, but after a while my eyes became accustomed to searching out the shortened grass and flattened patches. We skirted the crumpled remains of a squatter camp, stepping over rusted corrugated iron, and entered a grassy clearing.

  ‘Smoke break,’ Ash said, dumping his rucksack on the ground. ‘My shoulders are killing me.’ He sat down on the ground and leaned back against a rock.

  Saint shook her head. ‘As if smoking will help,’ she grumbled, but she shrugged off her own rucksack all the same and sat down next to him.

  Ash pulled a box of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit up, inhaling deeply. He grimaced. ‘Stale,’ he said.

  ‘Those coffin nails will kill you, Ash. And if Hester finds out you’ve started again, then lung cancer will be the least of your worries.’

  He grinned for the first time. ‘She won’t find out, though, will she?’ He glanced at me. ‘What you staring at?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing much,’ I fired back, and Saint laughed.

  ‘Sit,’ she said to me, and I did so gratefully. My leg muscles, which were already aching from the trudge through the mall, were now on fire. I followed their example and leaned against my own bag. I watched as Saint rummaged in her rucksack, pulling out a small plastic packet. ‘Catch!’ she said to me, chucking the packet my way.

  I reached out and caught it just in time.

  ‘Nice reflexes,’ she said. ‘You see that, Ash?’

  He just grunted.

  I shook the packet. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Sour worms,’ she said.

  For a second I thought I must have misheard her. ‘What?’

  ‘Sweets.’

  ‘Oh, wow! Thanks!’ I ripped into the bag. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had any real sugar. She wasn’t kidding about the sour part, but I relished the burst of sweetness on my tongue.

  ‘No problem,’ she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. The bushes behind us started to rustle and I glanced around, expecting to see another duiker.

  ‘Ash!’ Saint hissed.

  She stood up and for a second I thought she was staring straight at me, a look of pure hatred in her eyes. Ash followed her example, whipping the panga out from behind his back, the metal hissing as it slid out of its holder.

  ‘What’s going on –’ I started to say, not sure if I should start running or not.

  ‘Shhh!’ Saint hissed, holding up her hand.

  A low moan filled the air, and Ash and Saint stood back to back, faces grim, eyes searching the bush around us. Saint pulled two spiked metal balls out of her bag and attached them to the ends of the chains around her wrists.

  ‘You ready?’ Saint asked under her breath, so softly that I had to strain to hear her.

  ‘Always,’ Ash said, his mouth drawn in a tense line.

  ‘Keep down!’ Saint said to me.

  The bushes shook again and, then, with a crash of breaking branches, several figures burst into the clearing.

  At first I assumed they were normal people like us – their clothes were relatively neat – and it was only when I saw their faces that I realised what they were. Their eyes were rolled back in their heads, and their skin was the grey of the newly dead, as if all the blood in their bodies had been drained away. One of them threw back its head and howled, a horrible keening sound, more human than the moans I was used to hearing.

  The Rotters moved as one, racing towards us so swiftly that their limbs almost seemed to blur. Saint flicked her wrists, the chains around her arms whipping outwards. She started to spin them in an arc in front of her, then she twisted and flicked them towards the nearest Rotter and they coiled around its neck. Ash stepped forward and, faster than I could really take in, lopped the thing’s head from its body. Saint threw her arms out in a graceful motion, and this time the chains on either wrist simultaneously caught two of the Rotters around their necks. She pulled them together, and Ash smoothly ducked underneath the chains, whirled around and sliced off their heads. This time, the cut was so cleanl
y done that the heads remained where they were, only falling bloodlessly from their bodies as Saint released the chains. It was incredible to watch. Horrible, yet surreally beautiful, like watching an intricately choreographed dance.

  They dispatched the last one almost effortlessly, and this time, its head tumbled from its body and bounced towards me, ending up only a few feet from where I was still sitting.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I know it sounds sick, and you’re probably thinking that I should have been puking in shock or something, but it wasn’t like that. I knew it wasn’t human, you see. There was no blood, and at first, I just gazed at the head, transfixed. Thin white curling tendrils, that reminded me of incredibly fine tree roots, were emerging from the stump of the neck. They seemed to stretch towards me, and I found myself leaning forward to touch them.

  ‘No!’ Ash yelled, glaring at me and kicking the head away. ‘Don’t touch them!’ He shook his head at me, and stalked back to his rucksack.

  Saint wrapped her chains back around her arms, securing them at her wrists, then walked over to me. ‘What is that stuff?’ I asked her, noticing that the same tendrils were emerging from the heads and necks of the other bodies. ‘That white stuff?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you were around during the War, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘Don’t they teach kids anything these days? We call it spaghetti,’ she said with a grin. ‘That’s what reanimates the bodies. It grows inside them. You know, like, in their veins.’

  I shuddered. ‘Like some sort of . . . parasite?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess. Gross, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. Although, to be honest, there was something almost beautiful about the way the tendrils had curled and spread out. ‘Are they dangerous?’

  She snorted. ‘Dangerous? You hear this chick, Ash?’

  He was wiping down the blade of his panga and just grunted as if what I’d said was beneath his contempt.

  Still shaking her head in disbelief, Saint walked back over to Ash and the two of them started piling the bodies at the edge of the clearing. I didn’t offer to help. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t know what was going on, and I’d had enough of being treated like an idiot. They were whispering and laughing together as they went about their grisly work, and at that second, I don’t think I’d ever felt so left out, not even during my first days at Malema High.

  It was then that I saw it – the flash of a red jacket in the bush behind them.

  ‘Look out!’ I yelled.

  With no conscious knowledge that I was reacting within a split-second of shouting my warning, I reached behind me, grabbed a rock and threw it as hard as I could. I watched it fly through the air and hit the emerging Rotter right between its eyes. It staggered back, giving Saint just enough time to lash out with her chains, and for Ash pull a vicious-looking army knife out of his boot.

  Ash and Saint stood back to back for several more seconds, their eyes searching the bush.

  ‘That was close!’ Saint said, shooting me a small grateful smile.

  Ash wiped his knife on his jacket and walked over to me. ‘You okay?’ he asked me.

  ‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that?’ I said.

  ‘Good aim,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said casually, as if throwing rocks at dead people was what I did every day. But I realised then that I’d overlooked something vitally important.

  ‘They could see us!’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ash said, pulling out his box of cigarettes and lighting up. He offered the box to me, but I shook my head. ‘Fresh ones can.’

  ‘Fresh ones?’

  ‘The newly reanimated. It takes about a week for their senses to dull. We call them Hatchlings. Normally you don’t see a bunch together like that. The embassy must have just relocated a group of them.’ He swore under his breath.

  I thought back to the relocation wagon Dad and I had seen. Was this how the screaming people locked in the wagon had ended up? I shuddered.

  ‘So the longer they’ve been . . . infected . . . the less they can sense you?’ I said.

  He nodded, squinting as the smoke from his cigarette curled up into his eyes. ‘Yeah. Except you’ve really got to watch the ones who were alive when they were turned.’ He gestured towards the pile of bodies. ‘Like this lot. When they change, they’re fast.’

  My head was swimming. ‘So you mean . . . when I was in the mall, I could have bumped into a bunch like this?’

  Saint wandered over and dug in her rucksack. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Unlikely, though. There aren’t that many.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She sighed. ‘Think about it. Except for Lottery day and the relocations, the only time the Guardians get fresh corpses is when someone dies. And that doesn’t happen every day.’

  ‘Still,’ I said. ‘I suppose I was lucky.’

  ‘Or you’ve got a guardian angel,’ she said.

  ‘Or a Saint,’ Ash said with a grin, and for a second our eyes locked. Then he looked away and his face became inscrutable again. Still, I was glad to see he did have a sense of humour, however lame.

  ‘Where did you learn to fight like that?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll find out,’ Ash replied. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Can’t you just give me a straight answer for once?’

  ‘Enough questions,’ Saint said, rubbing her shoulder as if she’d strained it. ‘We have to move on.’

  There was a faint blush of colour in the sky, and I knew that it would be fully dark in half an hour or so, but I wasn’t going anywhere until I had all the answers I needed. I wasn’t going to let them ignore me again or treat me like a three-year-old.

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘I need to know now.’

  Ash also got to his feet and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Tough,’ he said, turning his back on me. ‘We have to get going.’

  I couldn’t hold in the resentment any longer. ‘Hey!’ I said, almost yelling. ‘You don’t have to speak to me like that! I saved your life just now!’ I jabbed him in the back with my index finger.

  He whirled around. ‘If I hadn’t got you out of the mall in time,’ he said, staring down at me, ‘you wouldn’t have been able to save me.’ He was so close that I could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath.

  Then he shoved past me, shouldering his rucksack as he went.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, my voice trembling with anger. I could feel furious tears building up. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Just leave it,’ Saint said, grabbing my shoulder.

  ‘Screw you!’ I shouted. The tears were seconds from falling and I knew that I’d rather die than let these two see me crying, even if they were just tears of rage and frustration. Throwing my backpack onto my back, I stalked off into the bushes, not caring where I was heading.

  ‘Hey! Wait up! It isn’t safe!’ Saint called, but I could hear a trace of amusement in her voice, which fuelled my anger even more. She didn’t think I’d actually have the guts to go it alone, and I was determined to prove her and her stuck-up boyfriend wrong.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  The path dipped and curved though fairly dense bush, and I increased my pace when I heard the scramble of footsteps behind me.

  ‘Lele!’ Saint called. ‘Don’t be stupid!’

  Slipping behind the trunk of a huge dead tree, I held my breath and waited until I could hear that she was inches away from where I was hiding. Then, throwing my entire weight behind it, I swung my rucksack as hard as I could. It slammed into Saint’s stomach, the weight of the shoes and clothes and soaps and shampoos enough to send her flying.

  I heard her gasp and call out for Ash, but I wasn’t going to hang around. I dumped the bag and sprinted away, legs pumping as if my life depended on it, dodging around tree stumps and leaping over branches. The blood roared in my ears, but I kept on going until I found myself at the foot
of a steep embankment. Without looking back, I pulled myself upwards, using tree roots to steady myself.

  I heard shouting behind me, but I couldn’t risk hesitating, not for a second. ‘Lele!’ Ash shouted. ‘Don’t! You’re going the wrong way!’

  I peered behind me. He was at the base of the embankment, Saint behind him. She was slightly out of breath, but otherwise didn’t seem too hassled.

  ‘Come back!’ he called again. ‘It’s dangerous!’

  But I was nearly at the top. Ignoring my burning lungs, I urged myself up to the top of the rise, and pushed through the clump of Port Jacksons that sprouted along the top of it.

  8

  I stopped dead, a scream stuck in my throat.

  I’d stumbled right into the middle of a mass of Rotters who were shambling along the top of the embankment. There were literally hundreds of them, and the old-book smell of them was intense. Most seemed to be in the last stages of deterioration, and they bumped and stumbled against each other in silence; the only sound was the hiss of the long grass brushing against their bodies, the silence making the sight of them even more disturbing. Several were nothing more than loosely knitted-together skeletons, and I could see the ropey white tendrils of spaghetti stuff snaking around their bare bones.

  I started to back away, but then the crowd parted and I caught a glimpse of the enclave fence in the distance.

  I had a choice to make: Make my way through the Rotters and leg it towards the enclave, or go back and join Saint and Ash and carry on being patronised.

  It wasn’t a difficult decision, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nerve-racking. I had to skip and dodge past tight knots of stumbling Rotters. I kept my eyes fixed on the ground wherever possible to avoid looking at them. Because, let’s face it, Gran was out there somewhere, her body infested with that weird white stuff, a reanimated facsimile of someone I’d once loved with all my heart.

  And I knew that if I saw her I’d lose it for good.

  I slipped between two particularly skeletal specimens and breathed a sigh of relief. The edge of the embankment was less than five metres away. But I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I stumbled over something hidden in the grass. I reached out reflexively and my hands brushed the back of a Rotter dressed in a rough tweed suit. It whirled around with the speed of a cobra, and I literally had to leap out of the way to avoid it touching me, skimming my palms on the rough ground as I caught my weight. Despite the attack I’d witnessed back in the clearing, I’d become used to their shambling gait and I’d been lulled into thinking that they were harmless. It shook its head from side to side as if it was trying to see out of the empty holes that had once held its eyes, and then it bent its neck right back and let out a totally inhuman moan. One by one, the others around it stopped their aimless shuffling and followed suit. The sound rose higher and higher as more joined in, until it sounded like the howl of an immense wind. I could feel the hairs on my arms standing up.